Many substrates, in the form of chips, are used for a wide variety of purposes. Many of these chips are provided with a relatively thin layer of sensitive material on one side. The sensitive material is the portion of the chip which performs the desired function, i.e. monitor temperature. The rest of the chip merely acts as a non-heat-conducting support for the sensitive material. An example of this type of configuration is found in the automotive industry where ceramic thermistor chips act as variable resistors to monitor engine coolant temperatures and air charged temperatures. These variable resistors are very accurate and very small, making them ideal thermistor layer is thin in comparison with the rest of the chip and therefore the thermistor layer can be easily damaged if handled improperly. Consequently, in order to avoid any unnecessary contact with the thermistor layer, termination of the thermistor chips, as well as all such chips, has become a time-consuming process, as only a small scratch, etc., can destroy the integrity of the thin layer of the chip, making the chip useless. Therefore, in order to ensure that the required characteristics are retained, termination of the chips has become very labor intensive.
Such labor intensive means of termination used in the automotive industry with respect to thermistor chips is to take two thermocouple wires and individually solder them to a temperature sensitive chip. The chip and wires are then twice overmolded to produce the finished product. This operation requires the handling of many discrete fragile parts and consequently requires a relatively large amount of time to complete, making this operation infeasible for robotic conversion.